If you aren’t already reading Think Christian yet, you should be. They’re doing some good blogging these days. Just in the last 24 hours, two good posts have come on line.

First, Andy’s meditation on the “Insurmountable Evil in [the] Congo?” Much of what is happening there is akin to what is happening in nearby Darfur, Sudan. Warning: the link in that post describes the horrific suffering occuring there. What is it that we, practically, can do? What is it that we, as Christians, are called to do? I’m not sure I end up where Andy does, but its another strong voice for raising awareness of this travesty.

Second, Charlie’s post on “The Embarrassment of Riches” and global poverty.

Check them both out….

I don’t have enough time this holy week to cogitate extensively on Michael Kruse’s good post, but I wanted to commend it to you for your meditation. Here is how his post starts:

Disconnect: Mainliners and Evangelicals in “Emergent” Conversation

I have been around the emergent conversation for about eight years now. My contact in the first few years was mostly isolated to an emergent group (Jacob’s Well) meeting in our church building. Over the last four years I have read more widely, attended an Emergent YM conference, hung out at Glorieta, NM, and involved myself in a variety of websites and blogs.

From the beginning, it has struck me that the emergent conversation was an evangelical and ex-evangelical phenomenon. Most of what I have experienced and read over the years confirms that perception, at least for the USA conversation. In more recent years, the conversation has
begun to spread beyond evangelical circles. Folks from mainline denominations have been entering the discussion. While attending the Emergent Convention in Nashville last year, I was in a group with about 300 randomly chosen people when we were asked how many of us were from
mainline denominations. Full two-thirds of the people raised their hands.

I hope to think about this when my head gets out of holy week…

…meanwhile, be sure to check out the discussion at emergesque about some other different ways people are approaching the emergent movement. Very interesting.

Reno posted this Easter advert on his blog soliciting feedback and comment:

What do you think?

Beyond the general discussion of church advertising, I think this is a decent message. Reno reads into this a “resuscitation” theology, but my first glance at this suggests that’s reading too much into it. Easter is about Jesus being resurrected, lifted up (literally, from the greek anastasis ton nekron), from Death into (new) Life. Flat-line to Life-Giving Pulse. No breath to full pneumatic inhalation and expiration. And its catchy, and gets to the point visually in a way that is gripping. So I like it, even if it does need some interpretation.

A few months after I got to my current church, I had a conversation with a member who was asking me about what I thought about public speaking. I told her that I love it (preaching), but that I find it hard to feel present throughout the entire sermon; it feels, I said, like my mind isn’t quite with me, and that it is hovering above myself sometimes. Its gotten better over time, but even now I’m not always sure I’m all there.

That’s okay; the theology is that its not my words which contain the Word heard by the congregation; but rather the Spirit uses my words and makes them efficacious with the hearer, and thus makes them vessels of the Word. But still I’d rather feel more like I was more there than I sometimes do…

Apostle John has a great post about how he day dreams during his sermons. I think this is something like what I experience, though he’s more blunt about what he’s thinking about. Thanks, AJ, for your thoughts. I’m glad that I’m not the only one who finds it occasionally normal to have my mind wonder in the pulpit.

“No, Jesus cannot be your boyfriend.”

Great post, Ann…

Two really good posts on how Christians can be really mean, one at behind the pulpit and one at the thin paper vault (number 3). I hate that….

Nice reflection on Bono and McConaughey’s apparence on Oprah (though I don’t know enough about him to say that he’s an amazing person)…